In the world of business, even high-tech business, this kind of uncertainty would not stand. Can you imagine Apple holding an event to say it had "strong hints" of the next iPhone? But we're talking about particle physics here, where a major discovery could up-end our understanding of reality itself. Scientists need to tread carefully lest they wade into another cold-fusion fiasco — where grandiose claims are made, then embarrassingly debunked.

That's why Tuesday's news sounds a little wishy-washy. The two main ongoing experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider, ATLAS and CMS, both independently saw evidence of a new particle in the expected mass range of the Higgs boson. There were strong signs of the Higgs at 124 and 126 GeV (giga electron volts) — right where it should be, though not strong enough that it can't be written off as a statistical fluke.

"Today, we learned a lot of new information," Pierluigi Catastini, a research associate with the ATLAS experiment, told Mashable. "We learned that the most likely window for the Higgs boson, in terms of Higgs mass, is very narrow. But it's too early to talk about discovery."

The scientists at CERN were extremely measured in their words. Fabiola Gianotti, spokesman for ATLAS, said the results "may be a fluctuation," and CMS's Guido Tonelli said that while the data point to the Higgs, it wasn't conclusive. CERN Director General Rolf Dieter-Heuer told the BBC: "We need more solid numbers."

Science websites, however, were more bold. The popular physics blog Not Even Wrong says, "It’s about what you would expect if a Higgs was there at 125 GeV, highly unlikely to see if there is no Higgs there." Writing for Science 2.0, Tommaso Dorigo went so far as to claim "Firm Evidence of the Higgs boson at last!"

So we're well on our way to finding the Higgs. But who cares? What does this unimaginably tiny thing, this "God particle", have to do with the real world?

In a word: everything. The Higgs boson is predicted by the Standard Model, which is kind of a user manual for modern-day physics. If the Higgs exists, then the Standard Model is correct, and physics as we know it lives to see another day. If there is no Higgs, the model is clearly incomplete, and new physics will be needed.

Many of the more adventurous physicists would actually prefer it if there were no Higgs boson, because it would open up whole new fields of research. "If we don't see [it], that would be an incredible discovery, be cause then the Standard Model doesn't work," says Catastini. "If we do find the Higgs boson, then we fill in the most important piece."

Besides giving physicists a reason to feel good about themselves, the Higgs boson's existence would clue us in to how particles acquire mass. It's believed that all of reality is awash in something called the Higgs field, and as particles move through it, they take on mass. It's unproven, but one inevitable consequence of the theory is the Higgs boson.

So if we find the Higgs, science will in one fell swoop:

Essentially complete and affirm Standard Model particle physics.

Show how particles acquire mass.

Put the Higgs field on solid ground for further study.

Once the Higgs boson is confirmed, which scientists seem to agree will likely happen by the end of next year, it'll be huge — even though, as scientific discoveries go, it's not as grand a milestone as the confirmation of Einstein's theory of relativity. But just as relativity up-ended classical conventions about physics, the existence of the Higgs will rule out some theories and point us further toward how the universe really works.

In a sense, the Higgs will have the opposite meaning of relativity. One consequence of Einstein's theory was that there was no need to imagine an "aether" that permeates the fabric of the cosmos. But the "God particle" will confirm the aether is alive and well, and it's called the Higgs field.

So the Higgs may end up showing that the universe is more connected than even Einstein ever thought.

Mashable
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